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This article recounts the story of the Seventh-day Adventists' success in Puno, Peru, between 1900 and 1925, from a grassroots perspective. Retracing the footsteps of prominent indigenous converts, the article presents the discovery that... more
This article recounts the story of the Seventh-day Adventists' success in Puno, Peru, between 1900 and 1925, from a grassroots perspective. Retracing the footsteps of prominent indigenous converts, the article presents the discovery that most of the church's native leaders were army veterans. These men had spent years away from their communities and, upon their return, discovered the numerous challenges of reintegration into rural society. In almost every aspect of communal life, veterans encountered obstacles to their reintegration: their lands had been usurped, they lacked the necessary social and political outreach, and they were ridiculed and marginalized because of the cultural-apparently mestizo-habits and practices they had adopted while away. In their quest for alternatives, these veterans left the Catholic Church and converted to Seventh-day Adventism. Conversion, I argue, offered an answer to the difficulties of their reintegration. It provided new opportunities for social and economic mobility and possibilities for veterans to reinterpret their Indian racial identity in a way that would include the seemingly mestizo traits they had adopted while in the barracks and on the coast. Thus, this paper sheds light on how religious conversion served to ameliorate some of the difficulties that veterans faced as they attempted to re-enter rural life.
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The explosion of new and diverse forms of Christianity across the Global South – mass conversions, emergence of new denominations, and revitalization within established churches – have been among the most staggering religious phenomena of... more
The explosion of new and diverse forms of Christianity across the Global South – mass conversions, emergence of new denominations, and revitalization within established churches – have been among the most staggering religious phenomena of recent times. The diffused Pentecostal and Evangelical movements, which gained prominence throughout the 20 th century, have already reached a dramatic following of over half a billion. The Roman Catholic Church and the historical mainline churches have joined the fray with their own charismatic renewal movements. The emergence of these new churches has had profound social, cultural and political impact within international, national and local arenas. Historically, we have seen how new Christian movements, often through the provision of education and health, have challenged traditional political and social structures. More recently, we have witnessed the ways in which new Christian communities transform political participation, affect marginalized groups and reconstruct social values. No wonder, therefore, that some have been referring to the explosion of new Christian forms as a "second reformation," a term indicative of its magnitude and far-reaching implications. We invite contributors to an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to dialogue between scholars of religion in the broad sense of the term, with the aim of developing comparative perspectives on these disperse yet interrelated religio-social developments. Through multi-sited comparative studies, exploration of moments of cross-regional interaction, and the mapping of channels of interregional influences, as well as in-depth and contextualized studies of specific case studies, we hope to gain insights into how local and global trends play out both geographically and over time. Though by no means exclusive, contributions related to the following themes will be particularly welcome:  Historical transformation versus continuity (e.g. relations between contemporary Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in the Global South and the historical templates of Protestant Western missionary).  Socio-political engagement (e.g. new Christian movements' influence on traditional socio-political structures, and their response to development challenges such as poverty and marginalization).
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